


The Measure of a Man

by IraBragi



Series: Workings of a Small Town [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Backstory, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 11:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10570206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraBragi/pseuds/IraBragi





	

When Gabriel Novak was four years old he convinced his nanny that he should be allowed to stay up late and watch cartoons until his parents got home because he missed them so much.  He even threw in a lip quiver to go with his big pleading eyes.  

    Michael had been a hellion that evening (“Oi child, how is it you eat all the sugar and it’s your brother who runs in circles?”) and then Marny (that wasn’t her name but it’s hard to say Marlaina when you're learning to talk so “Marny” had stuck) had looked at his sad, serious, little face and caved.  They had watched Blue’s Clues and GI Joe reruns until he had fallen asleep.  His parents were still out when he woke up the next morning.

    By the time he was seven Marny (and Elsa the housekeeper, and Carla the cook, and Shawn the guy who did security and drove) had all learned that while Michael would scream and kick until he got what he wanted Gabe would somehow talk his way around you and get what he wanted with a smile.

    When he was eight he told his parents that Sean and Ellie (who did yard work in the summer) were “doing kissy things but they didn’t have any clothes on!” behind the garage.  Both of them denied it but they were both dismissed the next day.  Neither one connected their secret being found out with the time that Shawn was an hour late picking Gabe and Michael up from school or the time that Ellie threatened to lock Cas in the tool shed if he kept following her around.  (Gabe had found his brother crying in the treehouse afterwards and had promised that no one would lock him up ever.)

    By the time he was ten Gabe fancied himself quite the cynical little man of the world.  In his book all you had to do to stay out of trouble was be smarter than the other guy.  At school he was the child whose teachers wrote “bright child if he would apply himself” and whose parents were too rich for him to ever end up in detention.  At home his parents responded to his brothers and him the same way most parents respond to the family dog tracking mud all over the carpet - varying degrees of amused impatience and loud demands to clean up the mess right now or else!”

 

    “And you’re just like them too!  Piece of dirty, bottom-feeding scum lawyer just like your parents are!”  His sixth grade teacher stomped out of a parent-teacher meeting that his parents had not shown up for (The meeting had been called after someone had switched the powerpoint of Ancient Greece mythology for screenshots of his emails.  Messages with someone who was most definitely not his wife.)  Gabe had been ratted out by Rafael, his friend and accomplice.  He still managed to convince the principal that there was no real  _ proof  _ that he had been involved.  The ten page essay on “The Importance of Honesty and Gentlemanly Behaviour” had been less of a deterrent and more of a lesson in not  trusting others in his schemes.  A lesson he took to heart.

 

    Gabe graduated pre-law with honors and moved on to law school with his parents blessing (as well as threats of disinheritance if he disappointed them) and a vague sense of amusement.  He was bright, he knew that, but everyone around him was determined to enthuse loudly about  the great things he was going to do and bright future he had.  They saw the handsome young man, the family name, the trust fund, and the smooth voice, it never occurred to anyone that there was anything more to see behind that.  Gabe told himself that that was how he liked it.  He was considering failing out of his first semester just to annoy Mother (and telling himself over and over that it had nothing to do with Cas.  That he wasn’t worried.  That he didn’t wake up most nights sweating, didn’t spend hours on his computer combing the internet for any trace of where he might be) when two things happened in quick succession - the debate team was one man short and the girl who sat across from him during the orientation meeting caught his eye.  

    If there was one thing Gabe could do it was play with words but debate gave him a focus, it taught him how to point his intellect in a useful direction, and gave him rules that focused his tongue and challenged his mind.  Within a month he was smitten.

    Kali was unimpressed with his smarts, his flirting, and his hair.  She was smart like a whip - logic too fast to follow, words that build traps around her opponents before they even realized they were in danger.  He tried to pick her up that first day, she turned him down with a sneer.  The next week he tore her mock proposal for a legislative motion to pieces in front of the class.  That Friday she came over with a bottle of whiskey and a revised proposal that she wanted him to look at.  She was as sharp and dangerous in bed as she was in class.

 

    They circled each other like bloodied sharks after that - wary but impressed, enjoying the fight for dominance too much to want it to end with anything as pedestrian as feelings or love.  Teachers learned that putting them together on assignments was a recipe for disaster and putting them on opposite sides was like setting off a nuke in the classroom.

    Christmas of his second year at law school (the private detective he had hired to track Cas still had no information, Gabe saw to it that his PI licence was revoked) he brought Kali home to meet his parents.  He had been worried that she and his parents would hate each other - he needn't have.  They were enchanted with one another.

    “Gabriel dear, if you let this one get away I will never forgive you.”  His mother’s manicured nails taped along his arm and her perfume wafted across his face.  Kali and his father were heatedly debating the state of the stock market and how to best interpreted the latest numbers out of China.  Michael was, ostensibly, participating in the conversation too but his attention never strayed far from the curves that Kali’s wine red dress.  After dinner she pulled him aside, “You didn’t tell me your family was so,” she giggled and swayed against his side (how much had she drunk?) “so interesting.”

 

    Years two and three of law school passed in a blur - long nights of studying (no amount of smarts will substitute for effort), a prestigious clerkship for a judge who owed his father a favor or three, and a trip to California to take his debate team (he was elected captain his junior year) all the way to the finals.

    Everyone else had decided that he and Kali were the perfect couple; “so bright and promising,” and “we’ll keep our eyes open for the wedding announcements.”  Between the two of them they were - well he had no idea what they were.  After a fight (she got an B and he had sided with the professor’s opinion) he stomped to the nearest bar and picked up the first person who he saw that shared a class with her.  (That it was a boy hardly mattered, Gabe had never understood the fuss people made about who you slept with, one body was more or less the same as another.)  He made sure the the hickies would be difficult to hide the next morning.

    After class she pulled him aside, her hand wrapped around his arm and pouted her lips at him, “Did you get bored without me around to be smarter than you?  Hmm?”  They got coffees and took them to the library to work on papers.  Weeks later when he walked into her apartment to find her making out with a guy (a TA in their economics class) she had rolled her eyes at him over the man’s shoulder and mouthed “come back later.”  He did.  He didn’t stop to ponder why he wasn’t upset.

    The final year was one long, hard, push towards the bar exam.  Frantic cram sessions and late night review groups.  Too much coffee that was one part espresso and one part sugar.  Too much to much to do to ever have the time to think.  Gabe knew he had several firms just waiting for him to pass the bar to offer him positions.  Sure, some wanted his name, or his parents’ favor, but he also was actually good at what he did.  Somewhere between conning the Cook for chocolate cake as a boy, dancing with Kali through mock trials, and hearing his name called as he walked across the stage, Gabriel realized that this was what he was born to do.

    After he passed his bar exam his parents threw a gala.  Kali had passed too and they had danced the night away.  She was stunning, diamonds at her throat and her red dress skimming the floor as she clung to his arm.   Too much alcohol and many congratulations had made a scramble of his brain.  It was late when she had pulled him close and breathed in his ear. 

    “So are we going to have the wedding before or after we sign our contracts?”  His breath had stuttered out of his chest and his grip on her arm faltered.  She laughed, “Come now don’t play coy.  I think it would make sense to have it before we start at our firms.  This summer perhaps?  I want to finish the year with my internship in anycase and I’m sure you father can find something for you to do.”  He had nodded and they kept dancing.  Later that night he lay on his back and stared at the bedroom ceiling.  No matter how much he willed it to, it would not stop spinning.

 

    Growing up he would hear his friends talk about their parents fighting - yelling and threatening each other then eventually divorcing as dramatically and expensively as possible.  His parents never fought.  They talked in polite tones and informed each other of what  _ would  _ happen.  

    Naomi Novak was the daughter of a congressman and a southern bell from Virginia.  Her father had raised her to be the smartest person in the room and her mother had taught her how to wield power and influence people.  After college she set her sights on business and had climbed the corporate ladder to CEO of her firm.  Lucifer was the corporate attorney who made a name for himself by ensuring nothing, absolutely nothing, would get between his clients and a deal.  They were both young and and brilliant, climbing their way to the top.  Naomi had the money and name, Lucifer the intelligence and charm.  Their wedding was the social event of the year.

    When Gabe was thirteen he found his father in the guest room with another woman.  He had threatened to tell his mother and Lucifer had just laughed.  When he made good on his threat Naomi had told him to let his father know that, “we have a perfectly good guest house for that sort of thing” and went back to work.  But he also remembered how his parents looked when they came back from a business trip his freshman year of highschool.  They had brokered some big deal for their company and made an obscene amount of money doing it.  It was late when they got home from the airport and he had fallen asleep in front of the TV playing Call of Duty.

The two of them were laughing and tipsily stumbling as they made their way to the kitchen.

“We did it.”  Naomi had slurred, “We make a good team Mr. Novak.”

“Damm straight we do Ms. Novak.  Damm straight.”  He heard the clink of glasses and the sound of a kiss, “To coming out on top!”  

Another giggle and a kiss, “Yes please!”  They stumbled past him toward their room, supporting each other and still laughing.

 

    He was idly flipping through his college's newspaper when he saw the article.  It was a spotlight piece on some distinguished alum.  Apparently Megan Masters had graduated thirty odd years ago.  The name sounded vaguely familiar, something from a case he had read.  The paper talked at length about her “illustrious but short” career and how “after only working for decade in the corporate world she took the position of judge in a small town and has been largely unheard of since.”  The piece ended with a picture of a woman in judges robes and the notation “County courthouse - Lawrence county.”

    Gabe would never be able to explain exactly what it was that made him decide to get in his car and take a road trip to Lawrence.  Boredom?  Curiosity? The hand of destiny?  A burning need to experience the flatness of the American midwest?  Or something even more basic than that - the simmering fear that most of us harbor - that one day thirty years from now we will look in the mirror and see our parents looking back at us.

    Whatever he had expected to find in Lawrence, Judge Megan Masters was not it.  She had looked him up and down, fired off a barrage of technical legal questions, cut him off halfway through his answers and then looked him in the eye for the first time,

    “You’ll do.  Job starts in two weeks, Monday, 8:00am.  Don’t be late.”  He blinked and tried to work out where this all got away from him.  “What job, Your Honor?”   
“It’s Ms. Masters when we aren’t in court and Public Defender.  You’ll be the only one for the county, the last one quit over a year ago.  The hours are long and the pay is crap but you’ll never be bored.”  She nods - it’s a dismissal - “Monday then.”

    “I.. um…” (Gabe can’t remember ever being reduced to stammering before in his life) “I wasn’t here to apply for a job.”  

    Her smile is surprising in it’s kindness, “I know.”

    He ignores his phone while he drives.  His father must have left him thirty voice mails.  Increasingly irate about missed appointments and paperwork.  Kali left text messages - wedding plans mostly.  He drives.

    It’s shockingly easy to wrap up his life and walk away.  He tells Kali first.  She listens to his halting words - he loves her but he can’t do this, it’s him not her, he needs to go.  The words feel like acid on his tongue.  He’s not sure if the lie is that he has stopped loving her or if it’s that he never did.  She smiles and touches his cheek, it’s a strangely gentle action for her.  “We had a good time.  I’d have never passed legislative law without you to make a fool of yourself and make me look brilliant by comparison.”  He snorts a laugh at that.  She starts to speak and stops, then starts again, “You know I’m not going to wait for you right?”  He smiles, not offended.  He knows she’s being honest and as un-cruel as she knows how to be.

    “I never expected otherwise.  Take care of yourself Kail.  You are going to be brilliant.”

    She grins at that, “Oh I know I will.”  He turns to go, “Gabriel!”  He stops, “Take care of yourself.”  He nods and keeps walking.

    His parents are both harder and easier.  They they threaten, they argue, they plead.  Father yells, mother cries, Michael sneers.  He tells them he doesn't care if they take away his trust fund (legally speaking they can’t unless they have him declared incompetent) or cut him out of the family inheritance (that they can do, he doesn't care.)  He stands there and let's them talk.  He’s so tired.

    “Is this because of Castiel?  Are you trying to punish us for his leaving?  Surely you understand that it wasn’t our fault.  He was always unstable.”  It’s his mother.  He feels the blood drain from his face.  It has been years since he heard her speak his brother’s name.  His parents still believe that one day Cas will “come to his senses” but deep down Gabe always knew the truth.  They are glad that he’s gone.  Cas who was an embarrassment, who would never be part of the the shiney, beautiful, life they had created.  Well now neither would he.

    “No mother, I never blamed you.”  (it’s true, he never had, it was like blaming an iceberg for sinking a ship.  No, it was himself he blamed.  He should have seen, he should have been there, he would have…)  “Father, I will have my paperwork wrapped up by Friday.  I’m sure that Kellie Sherman can take over most of my cases, she’s good.”  He nods to both his parents, “Mother, Father” and walks out of the room.    

 

Three weeks later he is just beginning to settle into his new office (it’s a tiny one room affair in the back of the courthouse.)  He’s juggling three files, two books on property law (he had never expected to need to understand the intricacies of free range cattle and private property and who is at fault when a drunk rancher decides to take a shot at said cattle) and a large cup of hot chocolate that he had just bought for 70 cents at the vending machine down the hall (that machine was quickly becoming his best friend.)  The man who strides around the corner coming the other direction is - well hot.  He’s outrageously tall and built and his hair just brushes the top of his collar.

    “Excuses me, do you know where the public defender’s office is?  I need to find the idiot and sort out this mess.”  The man man gestures with the papers in his hand.  His voice is rich and deep with hints of the local accent.

    “Well you’ve found him.  Let's have a look at this mess you speak of.”  Gabe lets his eyes wander as the man sputters and turns a bright shade of red.  This was going to be fun. 


End file.
